Goldie Hawn is famous for the funny and confident women she portrays on-screen, but the Academy Award-winning actress has always been honest about her mental health struggles. They date back to her school days, Hawn tells SheKnows, when she remembers being “traumatized” by widespread fear of atomic war. “They showed images and videos [in school], and we had to duck and cover,” she remembers. “I really thought I was going to die before I had a life.”
Hawn started MindUP: The Goldie Hawn Foundation in 2003, inspired by both her own struggles and the widespread pain and trauma she observed following 9/11. She couldn’t help but notice the similarity between the terrorist attacks and her own childhood fears of nuclear war. “I couldn’t even imagine what children might be going through, seeing the buildings fall and feeling hopeless and anxious and really not even understanding,” Hawn remembers. That, along with the rising numbers of adolescent suicides, prompted Hawn to take action. “That wasn’t going to work for me as a parent, as someone who loves children and as someone who had a great trauma myself fearing these kinds of things,” she says.
Related story
The Way I Talk to My Kids About My Mental Illness Matters
MindUP looks to help kids build mental resilience by teaching them to regulate their emotions, calm their nervous system, and “choose kindness and gratitude daily,” per the org’s website. They encourage taking three mindful “brain breaks” a day in the classroom, Hawn says, which helps kids relax and tap into their emotions. “We give them pro-social behavior, fun things to do, like gratitude journals and acts of kindness,” she says. It’s all neurologically connected: these actions benefit your mental state, Hawn says, and they’re helpful for learning too.
Goldie Hawn with students at a MindUP event.
Courtesy of MindUP
Starting the organization in 2003, Hawn remembers feeling like a “disturbance,” talking about mental wellness before the conversation became what it is today. And while she points out that social media and the effects of the pandemic negatively affected kids’ mental health, she’s also encouraged by the increased awareness. “People now are really looking at it, talking about it, seeing the symptoms,” says Hawn, who just celebrated MindUP’s 20th anniversary. “They’re engaged now.”
Hawn has found strategies that work for her own mental health, too. She suffered from anxiety when she was starting out in Hollywood in her early 20s, and began meditating in 1972. She also went to a psychologist for nine years “to understand my own brain,” she recalls. “And that was brilliant.”
Exercise is also crucial to her mental health. “I don’t think a day goes by that I’m not stretching, that I’m not jumping on my trampoline or doing these things that actually bring me more joy,” Hawn says. She’s a proponent of positive thinking as well, noting that if you look for “the good side of things,” you’ll always find something to be grateful for. It might go against our natural way of thinking, Hawn adds, because our brains are “negative-biased, and that means we’re always looking for the downside. That’s our ancient, very primitive reptilian brain. It used to help us save from lions, tigers and bears, and now it responds to very different sort of stimuli, which is sadness, too much television, too much social media.”
Related story
The Way I Talk to My Kids About My Mental Illness Matters
Taking breaks from mindless scrolling to get active can make a big difference. “It’s important to get up and move around,” Hawn sums it up. “So that’s my secret.”
Of course, as the matriarch of a famously large and loving family, Hawn also takes the time to share her wisdom where it’s needed. “My grandchildren know about what I’ve been doing” with MindUP, she says, noting that those grandkids range in age from almost 21 down to six months old. “We talk about it a little bit… But I’m pretty much just a grandma-a-go-go. I don’t come in and preach, but I do help them if they need that.” She says she’s helped teach her kids, when they were growing up, and her grandkids “how to quiet their mind and just let thoughts go and relax your body, and don’t forget to breathe.”
And Hawn has seen the difference in-person. “One of my grandchildren, at three [years old], he made himself breathe, even without coaxing, to be able to calm himself down,” she remembers.
It’s more proof of what Hawn has been sharing for years. “Your brain is the superpower,” she says. “Our thoughts, our actions will lead us into a much better life.”
Before you go, check out our favorite affordable mental health apps:
